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Friday, April 1, 2016

ON MY RADAR (04/1/16 edition): Books that have hit my radar

Here are some books that have recently hit my radar and set off my alarm bells...

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Cora is a slave on a
cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all slaves, but Cora
is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is coming into
womanhood; even greater pain awaits. Caesar, a recent arrival from
Virginia, tells her of the Underground Railroad and they plot their
escape.

Like Gulliver, Cora encounters different worlds on each
leg of her journey...Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors
of black life in pre-Civil War America. The Underground Railroad is at
once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape
the horrors of bondage, and a shattering, powerful meditation on the
history we all share.

Wolf Road by Beth Lewis

A debut literary thriller from an incredible new voice. What do
you do when the man who gave you everything turns out to be a killer?

Everything Elka knows of the world she learned from the
man she calls Trapper, the solitary hunter who took her under his wing
when she was just seven years old.

But when Elka sees the Wanted
poster in town, her simple existence is shattered. Her Trapper – Kreagar
Hallet – is wanted for murder. Even worse, Magistrate Lyon is hot on
his trail, and she wants to talk to Elka.

Elka flees into the
vast wilderness, determined to find her true parents. But Lyon is never
far behind – and she’s not the only one following Elka’s every move.
There will be a reckoning, one that will push friendships to the limit
and force Elka to confront the dark memories of her past.

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain NeuvelA
girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South
Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of
a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the
firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a
little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Seventeen years
later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins,
architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief;
military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.

But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose
Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to
crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being
interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as
enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and
her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing
discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the
pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an
instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?